V.I. Geste’s project, developed in 1809 and intended for office buildings, was used for constructing buildings of the Tsarskoye Selo Town Police (The Town Police Board, the Board of the Police Chief and Fire-station). The constructing was carried out during the 1820s-1830s according to the design which was partly changed by V.P. Stasov regarding to the central building, it was added with a fire-tower. The architect V.I. Geste was the head of this work. But for all that, the idea of fixing corners of this quarter by symmetric houses, instead of which the stone fence was constructed, remained unfulfilled. This change of the original plan was caused that the Town Council, the main office place, transferred from Sophia Town, was founded in the new state building in Moscow Street (its present address is 33 Moscow Street). The adjacent to houses territory was used as the materials yard of the Town Police where a garden and coach shed were constructed. The coach shed has been survived but it was rebuilt. It has been used as the garage of the Pushkin Fire-station.
In the early 20th century in these buildings there were the Town Police Board, a town judge, the Board of the Police Chief of the town, the address department, the First Police Station and the Fire Station.
The main building of the Town Police Board was overbuilt from the yard side by an entresol with a skylight over the main stairs in 1908 to the architect S.A. Danini’s design. Originally a fire-tower was raised above a smart loggia, planned by Geste, with a distyle portico of the Tuscan order and a window with a rectangular opening and a semicircular head. At the main building sides there are symmetric buildings of the Board of the Police Chief (22 Leontyevskaya Street) where during 1853-1861 there was a flat of the Town Police Chief Nikolay Ivanovich Tsylov, a famous author of atlases of Tsarskoye Selo and Saint Petersburg, and the Fire Station (32 Leontyevskaya Street). Between them there were equally decorated passages into the yard with stone posts for gates and the blind stone fence. Splendid exuberant trees, among them there was a magnificent old oak, raise above the stone fence from the side of Moscow Sreet, remembering about the garden which was placed here in former times.
Since the 1920s the Detskoye Selo (Pushkin) Town Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Soldiers’ Deputies and executive powers were placed in these buildings. At the present time the former building of the Town Police Board is used as the municipal Historic and Literary Museum. The District Board of the Military Committee is placed in the buildings of the Board of the Police Chief and the Fire Station now. According to the original function the historical yard wings are used for a fire brigade (24, 26 Leontyevskaya Street). Danini Silvio Amvrosievich
Hastie Vasily Ivanovich (William)
Stasov Vasily Petrovich
Tsylov Nikolay Ivanovich
Leontievskaya Street/Pushkin, town, house 32